Clothes of a career

The visitors to Woodhouse Lynch Clothiers Downtown aren't always there to buy an expensive suit.

The visitors to Woodhouse Lynch Clothiers Downtown aren't always there to buy an expensive suit.

When they're actually shopping, store owner Tom Lynch is their expert, a 49-year veteran of retailing who looks at a man and knows his shirt size.

The rest of the time, though, the everyday regulars stop in because Lynch is a confidant, a teller of corny jokes, and a friend who will remind you that it's your mother's birthday.

Described by one customer as "the mayor of Broad Street," Lynch runs a sort of fraternity and even a Thursday morning prayer group in the shop he's owned since 1972.

So when Lynch, 69, retires and closes the store at the end of the month, customers say the void Downtown will be much larger than the empty retail space.

"You can always find another place to buy a suit," said Jay Schoedinger, the vice chairman of Schoedinger Funeral and Cremation Service, who visits the store almost daily. "I'll miss the friendship."

The people are what Lynch will miss about the store, too. Socializing is what got him into retail in the first place, back in college.

In 1959, he started working part time at the University Shop, a clothing-store chain with a location at Ohio University. He found it so much fun that he turned the job into a 13-year career with the company.

When campus fashions changed from preppy to hippie in the Vietnam War era, Lynch got discouraged. Fortunately, he had a friend who also wanted to keep conservative dress alive: Jerry Woodhouse, who had managed the U-Shop at Miami University.

They opened Woodhouse Lynch in Columbus, running the store together for three years before Woodhouse quit the business, leaving his name behind.

At the time, the store was one of several traditional men's-apparel retailers Downtown. Lynch can name nine 1970s competitors off the top of his head.

Now, he can't think of any.

Lynch's stubborn insistence on keeping the store Downtown has brought a series of highs and lows for the business.

On the upside, he's dressed a slew of business executives and every Ohio governor and Columbus mayor since the store opened.

"He'd always go the extra mile and work hard because the customer always came first," former Mayor Greg Lashutka said. "You got wonderful service that, all too often, you don't get out of larger stores."

Capital University professor Myron Grauer has often suggested Woodhouse Lynch to his law students -- and not only for the clothing.

"If you go into his store as a stranger, you could come out having met someone who could help you in your career," he said. "Going in there to buy clothes, I ended up meeting a lot of interesting people."

But in recent years, new malls have pulled Downtown workers home to the suburbs to shop. Shoppers now tend to value the convenience of malls over the personal service provided by Woodhouse Lynch, said Columbus retail analyst Chris Boring of Boulevard Strategies.

"It's a concept that's fading away. In general, fashion retailers find it very difficult to operate in an independent location," he said. "Fashion is a selection-driven business, and most people are going to shop where they have the most selection."

Meanwhile, "business casual" has become the dress code for companies that used to put everyone in suits.

It makes Lynch shake his head. He has told sloppily dressed graduate students that they look as if they're about to clean a garage.

"You need a suit or sport coat and tie to have the business you want or need; everything starts there," he said. "I still don't understand it. Oh, well. You can't convert the world."

Sales at Woodhouse Lynch have been flat for two years, Lynch said. The circumstances were well-timed with his readiness to retire and spend more time with his family.

Lynch's son, Tom Jr., 44, has worked in the store since high school but has decided not to continue the business in an economic environment that's straining most retailers.

"I'm not sure if the risk is viable," he said. "If I saw a bright, bright future, it may have been different."

So it's not without tears that the Lynches close the shop.

Tom Jr. estimates that he knows 90 percent of his customers on a first-name basis. In introducing shoppers to each other, the elder Lynch recites where they went to school, where they grew up, what their children's college majors are.

Of course, there have been some store visitors the Lynches have never known much about.

The store hosts a guess-the-score contest for every Ohio State University football game, which attracts loyalists and noncustomers alike. The winner among the 150 or so entries gets a free tie.

And when homeless people wander into the store, Lynch often takes them to a soup kitchen instead of kicking them out.

"You just have to be nice to people," he said. "All people."

So every day, Lynch stands outside his store, sweeping a clean sidewalk as an excuse to greet anyone who walks by. Customers buy him a new broom when all the unnecessary sweeping reduces one to a stub.

When the store closes, he'll keep in touch with customers by continuing another long-standing tradition: calling them to sing Happy Birthday to You. He has birthdays recorded on almost every day of a ragged calendar from 1980.

And he'll send out a letter announcing his retirement, much as he's sent customers handwritten thank-you notes after every sale.

"Because of people like you, I've been able to survive this business for 37 years," Lynch often writes. "Your business is important, but your friendship is even more important."

asaunders@dispatch.com

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